International Women's Day: UK's aid aims to help poorer women

Our well-spent and targeted international aid can do a lot to improve the lives of girls and women marginalised by poverty

International Women's Day: Khadija, from Syrian, walks with her children in a vineyard in Kefraya, Bekaa valley, eastern Lebanon. She gets paid $7 a day for her work in the vineyard. Photograph: Jamal Saidi/Reuters

Last week I announced changes to how the UK government delivers aid. We said we will work more strategically with our support targeted in fewer countries, refocus programmes on to what works, and offer increased support for international agencies that can prove they deliver results. But key to all of this is improving the lives of those who are too often at the bottom of the pile.

I saw this for myself when I visited Rwanda last year, where I met Anne Marie, 46, who has experienced great joy and deep grief in the past two years. In 2009, two of her daughters, Francine and Josiane, died after contracting malaria. There was a medical clinic just an hour's walk away, but Anne Marie did not have the 20p needed for treatment that would have saved their lives.

Times have changed for Anne Marie, and her family now sleeps safely under a UK government-funded, insecticide-treated anti-malaria bednet, which cost just £4. But her story is a clear reminder of what well-spent aid can achieve for families in the developing world.

According to the UN, six out of 10 of the world's poorest people are still women and girls. To those living in such dire circumstances, International Women's Day might not mean much. However, to those of us in a position to be able to do something about their plight, it should be a sharp reminder of the challenges ahead.

Women in the developing world face situations that, thankfully, few of their counterparts in richer countries will ever encounter. In Rwanda, one woman in every 35 dies in childbirth, while in the UK the figure is one in 4,700. Getting pregnant and giving birth is one of the most dangerous things many women in developing countries will ever do in their lives.

The UK government will enable at least 10 million more women to use modern methods of family planning, allowing them to choose whether or not to have children, as well as when and how many to have. We will support at least 2 million women to deliver their babies safely, with skilled midwives, nurses and doctors.

Enabling girls and women to make informed choices and act on them is central to what we will do. Reaching girls early enough can transform their life chances and give them choice and control over decisions that affect them. This means getting more girls into school. Women with more years of schooling have better maternal health, fewer and healthier children, and increased economic opportunities. Girls who are in school are likely to marry later, less likely to have premarital sex, and more likely to use contraception.

While some of the reasons for girls not being in school are complex, some are extremely easy to address. Girls do not want to share toilets with teenage boys, so installing separate latrines helps girls to stay in school for longer. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), our support over four years to targeted schools will help 180,000 girls enrol and stay in primary school.

We also need to offer girls and women opportunities to work or start their own businesses. Research shows that when they earn money, they reinvest the majority of it back into their families.

That's why we provide small loans to women to pull their families out of poverty. In Afghanistan, Maryam, a widow and mother of two girls, runs a tailoring business. She arrived back five years ago from Pakistan as a penniless refugee, but thanks to a £700 microfinance loan through UK government funding, she now employs six people and owns her own home and car.

We know all this good work will flounder if we don't free women from the violence they face every day in the world's most conflict-affected countries. The ongoing reports of mass rapes in the DRC is shocking, with the consequences of rape and sexual abuse devastating survivors and their communities long after the guns have fallen silent.

That is why we are running a project in the country which provides 27,000 women with emergency medical care and almost 3,500 women with psychosocial support.

Finally, we will work with bilateral and multilateral partners, and increasingly with the private sector, to improve the international response to better women's lives. The UK has also played a leadership role in the establishment of UN Women, the new organisation dedicated to gender equality, which we will support once we see a copy of their strategic plan. We are deeply committed to help it become a powerful agency.

Today marks the centenary of International Women's Day, and great strides have been made in many places. We must ensure that as we celebrate a new century for the advancement of women's rights we do so with renewed vigour and determination to improve the lives of girls and women marginalised by poverty.